The Queen of Night

Yes, yes, I remember the song, every beast that scavenges knows the song by heart:

Scurry home, ere moonrise comes;

The Queen of Night, her world becomes.

Scurry home, to hole and haunt;

Her knives can find you in the dark,

Her knives will claim the flesh she wants.

Are we but fools? Hunger makes us so, it seems, or maybe we simply forget. Easy to forget the Queen when it's been some time. Easy to forget when it's been a lean month since any of us vanished into her shadow, since anyone found the bloody shreds of fur where one of our kind once was.

And it's not like I've ever seen her - no one has. They always said that she looks like nothing, that when she claims your bones you see only the shadow on the moon, the darkness, and then the blades come down to end your time. That's what I heard from the others, at least.

But I have seen her, the Queen in her terrible glory. I've seen her, and they are fully wrong. Her regalia is as pale as the moon that guides her awful hunt, crowned by what I can only imagine is a mask. It's a bony white thing, marked with some strange symbol in the color of old blood. What must she be concealing behind that mask of hers? If I have a thimble of luck, I'll never have to know.

Luriu didn't have such luck. He saw the Queen, too, and he paid in his blood. He was next to me when the Queen came down, and it was just a turn of fate that she set her violent eyes upon him. The next time it happens, it will be my turn, because I owe her a life.

We shouldn't have been out that night - it was youthful foolishness, thinking we could outmaneuver the wings of death. But in the moment, it seemed like a safe errand. The moon was lost, the night at its very darkest, and what living thing could possibly hunt at such a time? Darkness felt like a comfort back then. Safer than the day, at least, when one might end up in the pitiless jaws of some dog.

So we frolicked out from the trees, sure of ourselves and our skill, sure that we would be the fat and happy ones when the cold days came. I truly had no fear. Maybe I didn't have time for it.

She didn't make a sound as she descended upon us, quiet as a mellow breeze through the bare branches. Luriu caught a glimpse of her - how, I can never guess - with narrowly time enough to dodge out of her grasp. For the moment, I couldn't see her, only feel the air snapping aside before her great presence.

Then we were moving, scurrying for the safety of the trees, those branches that even the great Queen couldn't navigate like our kind can. They seemed so close - I'd climbed that one a thousand times, I surely knew how long it would take to reach it. She wouldn't have time to strike twice. Ah, but fear has a way of distorting things, or maybe that's the naievete of youth. It may have been a short distance, yet I have never run so far in my life.

As I mounted the trunk, I felt that Luriu was no longer by my side, and I turned back to see what had come of him. I should have just run - there was no need to see what was behind me. The barest sliver of the moon threw enough light that I could watch in grim clarity as the Queen drove her knives into Luriu. He fought against her, or...no, there was no fight left. It was simply his final expression of fear, a last twitch that kicked forth drops of blood.

For a moment, her eyes locked on to me, the prey that had managed to escape. She let loose a terrible sound, a shriek that pierced me as keenly as her knives ever could. It was her final curse upon me. I had trespassed into her territory and escaped, but she knew me now, and some other distant night she would have me all the same. I knew that those violent eyes would forever search for me.

This is why I no longer fear the daylight, children. The dogs are still out there, and the snakes, and everything else that hungers for us. My fate is set, though. I owe a life to the Queen of night, and one brutal evening I will pay back that debt.